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Poland reveals Warsaw Pact nuclear attack map

Nicholas Watt

Most of Europe would have been wiped out in a conflagration

Warsaw (POLAND): Poland's new Rightwing Government has risked a damaging confrontation with Russia when it published a Warsaw Pact map showing detailed plans for Soviet nuclear strikes against western Europe.

Poland threw open the doors of its military archives to show how most of Europe would have been laid to waste in a nuclear conflagration between East and West. Dating from 1979, when U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and his Soviet Union counterpart Leonid Brezhnev were discussing detente, the map showed how Warsaw Pact forces would have responded to an attack by the NATO alliance.

Mushroom clouds

A series of red mushroom clouds over western Europe show that Soviet nuclear weapons strikes would have been launched at Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium if NATO struck first. Red clouds are drawn over the then German capital, Bonn, and other key German cities such as the financial centre of Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart, Munich and the strategically important northern port of Hamburg. Brussels, the political headquarters of NATO, is also targeted. Blue mushroom clouds, representing the expected NATO nuclear strikes, are drawn over cities in the eastern bloc, including Warsaw and the then Czechoslovakian capital, Prague. France would have escaped attack, possibly because it is not a member of NATO's integrated structure. Britain, which has always been at the heart of NATO, would also have been spared, suggesting Moscow wanted to stop at the Rhine to avoid overstretching its forces. The exercise, entitled Seven Days to the River Rhine, indicated Warsaw Pact forces aimed to reach the Franco-German border within a week of a NATO attack.

Standing next to the fading map in Warsaw on Friday, Polish Defence Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said, ``The objective of the exercise on this map is to take over most of western Europe - all of Germany, Belgium and Denmark.''

Mr Sikorski, who made a name for himself working for the Rightwing American Enterprise Institute thinktank in Washington, made clear he was prepared for a backlash from Russia, whose President, Vladimir Putin, has lamented the demise of the Soviet Union.

Mr Sikorski believes the map shows how Moscow was prepared to sacrifice Poland to save the Soviet Union. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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